Wordsworth McAndrew: Wordsworth McAndrew

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Wordsworth McAndrew - Guyana's Son

Born in the Land of the Mighty Roraima and the Kaieteur Falls

Wordsworth Lives On...

In our hearts, in our memories, in symbols signifying our national heritage ( theatre guild, coal pot, carbolic soap, bush tea, plait bread, butter flap, pone, brukkup, ol' higue - did we say ol'higue)

OL' HIGUE
by Wordsworth McAndrew

Ol' woman wid de wrinkled skin,
Leh de ol' higue wuk begin.
Put on you fiery disguise,

Ol' woman wid de weary eyes
Shed you swizzly skin.

Ball o' fire, raise up high
Raise up till you touch de sky.
Land 'pon top somebody roof
Tr'ipse in through de keyhole - poof!
Open you ol' higue eye.

Find de baby where 'e lie
Change back faster than de eye.
Find de baby, lif de sheet,
Mek de puncture wid you teet',
Suck de baby dry.

Before 'e wake an' start to cry
Change back fast, an' out you fly.
Find de goobie wid you skin
Mek de semidodge, then - in!
Grin you ol' higue grin.

In you dutty powder gown
Next day schoolchildren flock you round.
"Ol' higue, ol' higue!" dey hollerin' out
Tek it easy, hold you mout'
Doan leh dem find you out.

Dey gwine mark up wid a chalk
Everywhere wheh you got to walk
You bridge, you door, you jealousie
But cross de marks an' leh dem see
Else dey might spread de talk.

Fly across dis window sill,
Why dis baby lyin' so still?
Lif' de sheet like how you does do,
Oh God! Dis baby nightgown blue!
Run fo' de window sill!

Woman you gwine run or not?
Doan mind de rice near to de cot.
De smell o' asafoetida
Like um tek effect 'pon you.
You wan' get kyetch or what?

But now is too late for advice,
'Cause you done start to count de rice
An' if you only drop one grain
You must begin it all again.
But you gwine count in vain.

Whuh ah tell you?

Day done, light an' rice still mountin'
Till dey wake an' kyetch you countin'
An' pick up de big fat cabbage broom
An' beat you all around de room.
Is now you should start countin'

Whaxen! Whaxen! Whaxen! Plai!
You gwine pay fo' you sins befo' you die.
Lash she all across she head
You suck me baby till um dead?
Whaxen! Whaxen! Plai!

You feel de manicole 'cross you hip?
Beat she till blood start to drip.
"Ow me God! You bruk me hip!
Done now, nuh? Allyou done!"

Is whuh you sayin' deh, you witch?
Done? Look, allyou beat de bitch.
Whaxen! Whaxen! Pladai! Plai!
Die, you witch you. Die.
Whaxen! Whaxen! Plai!

Wordsworth McAndrew Lives On...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: I had a chat with Mac just three weeks ago, when Ingram Lewis visited him in the hospital,and allowed me to speak with him via cell phone.It was a short conversation, but Mac was in good spirits.I told him he sounded great, and to stay healthy. So, it was a total shock when I heard how quickly his health had deteriorated, and he had dwindled away.Thanks to the Guyana folk festival, I got the opportunity know Mac as a true cultural visionary. I also got to know him personally, when I helped him to select a pair of sandals, and trousers, to complete his outfit for a folk festival awards ceremony. We became more acquainted, when I accompanied him during a long subway ride to Columbia University in NYC, to attend the 2004 symposium.I learned how brilliant,and humorous he was. I will miss that funny chuckle, and the extraordinary talent and versatility that Wordsworth McAndrew shared with the Guyanese people.
Mac, you were the greatest. May God be with you always.
Love,
Tangerine Clarke; April 27, 2008 at 2:03 PM
Anonymous said...: Wordsworth McAndrew was a man of unique talent. A cultural icon, Guyana's pride who has left an indelible mark on the landscape of Guyanese/Caribbean Literature. He was one of a kind, rare and irreplaceable. Sleep on brother! “You have finished your course, henceforth a crown shall replace your pen”.

James C. Richmond; April 27, 2008 at 3:36 PM
Anonymous said...: I became Scouta Mc's friend since 1974-1975 when he was the editor and presenter of the Guyana Marketing Corporation Short Story Series for radio. He loved my stories and urged me to give him at least one per month. We spoke constantly in person or by telephone before he recorded any of my stories for broadcast, since he was meticulous about reading my Dartmouth (where I grew up) creole correctly. Mc read one of my stories, "De Great Jackass Race" so brilliantly that the story had several rebroadcasts, and I was invited to the radio station for a live interview. The interviewer was a female whom I don't remember, but the reason for the interview was that Scouta had read my story with such gusto that the public wanted to know more about me. Needless to say, the more Scouta read my stories, the more people thought that they were his.
Some people have also thought that Scouta schooled me in folklore. That's very flattering, but we just happened to be two men who loved the oral tradition. Before Scouta migrated from Guyana to the US in 1979 or early 1980, we spoke a lot at his home in Kitty, mine in Festival City or a beer shop about peculiar Dartmouth creole words that he was unfamiliar with. In turn, I learnt lots of proverbs from him. In fact, before he left for the US, he gave me over a thousand. I later used several of those proverbs on my radio show "Ganga Time". Unfortunately, Scouta never heard any of my broadcasts but, when we reconnected in the US, he had me give him the details of what "Ganga Time" was about. Scouta was a stickler for details. When his sight began leaving him, he dictated a few things by telephone for me to write. After the dictations, I had to read what I had written. He listened to every word and also to note whether I had omitted dashes, commas, colons, semicolons or fullstops.
Aside from folklore, Scouta and I talked sports. He loved talking about all sports, but his favourites were cricket, swimming and boxing in that order. He could talk for hours about the West Indies batsman Chanderpaul whose reliability he loved. (I do as well.) If I told Scouta the West Indies played a game against any team, one of his first questions was: "How we baai do?" If Chanderpaul hadn't performed very well, Scouta would be unhappy.
Scouta did not quite like the US culture, and was often critical of American Standard English. In addition to him not fitting in here, he was often suspicious of even Guyanese people who tried to help him. His last years brought him near blindness, broken hands and much emotional stress. BUT SCOUTA REMAINED MENTALLY ALERT AND INDEPENDENT TO THE VERY END! MAY THE SCOUTA REST IN PEACE!

Roy Brummell; April 30, 2008 at 3:02 AM

The Antilles - weblog of the Caribbean Review of Books

Saturday, 26 April 2008

R.I.P. Wordsworth McAndrew, 1936-2008

The Guyanese writer, folklorist, and broadcaster Wordsworth McAndrew--"one of the most influential advocates for the collection, preservation and celebration of Guyanese folk life", as today's Stabroek News puts it, in some ways the Guyanese equivalent of Louise Bennett--died yesterday in New Jersey, at the age of 72. The Signifyin' Guyana blog has posted a tribute to McAndrew by his friend and colleague John Rickford:

I learned a lot from Mac over the years. He had an absolute love for Guyanese "culchuh" as he put it--and an infinite interest in every variant of every tradition (queh queh, obeah, cumfa), song, story, game, way of cooking, eating, celebrating, and so on that Guyanese and West Indian peoples of every ethnic group had inherited and transformed. I learned a lot from him about how to do fieldwork well. For instance, if someone said they played a game called "Airy Dory," and asked if he'd ever heard of it, he'd either say "No," (although I knew he had heard several accounts of it already) or otherwise indicate that he wanted to hear this particular person's version. Invariably, some new detail, some local variant would emerge in the course of the narration, and his understanding of the full range and complexity (and perhaps history) of that cultural institution would be enriched in the process.

PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana pays tribute to Mac

The President of Guyana, Mr Bharrat Jagdeo, in extending a CARIFESTA tribute for Wordsworth McAndrew, has said that the government will pay special homage to the folklorist during the staging of the tenth Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts (CARIFESTA) this August.

“I express profound sadness at his death and extend deepest sympathies to his family, relatives, friends and to all those who share in his bereavement,” the President said in a statement yesterday.

The President said McAndrew’s passing was ill-timed given the preparations for CARIFESTA, but said “a special homage” will be paid during the festival to the contributions of “this exemplary Guyanese.”

“Wordsworth McAndrew was a trailblazer in the study and understanding of local folklore. Through his explorations of this subject, he helped us to celebrate our common roots. Through his work on oral traditions, literature, music and on radio, he has grounded us in our rich and diverse cultural history,” the President said.

The foundation that he laid in the field of local folklore is of inestimable value; his work timeless, standing not only for his own generation but for all times, the President added.

“For helping to define those common threads that form part of the fabric in which we are all adorned, Wordsworth McAndrew will remain an example for all, showing the importance of folk culture in the quest for national identity and cohesiveness.”

Pritha Singh on Mac

Wordsworth McAndrew, in his abundance of joy, optimism and courage, has left an indelible mark on those who knew him and had the privilidge of being alive when he "owned" the streets at the birth of our nation - Guyana . As a youth in the 70s, I remember him in visiting Rajkumari in the "writers salon". In New York, when he lived in Richmond Hill, my brother Gora, myself and the whole troupe walked through the streets as "de after party", making up songs about the people and things we saw along the way. I called him "Words" - He made everyone feel special by his attentive warmth, enthusiasm and zest for life, even though he was carrying a lot of pain and disappointment inside. I offer this lotus to you, Words, from all of us with love and shantih!
Pritha Singh, Executive/Artistic Director
E: rajkumari@verizon.net P: 718.846.5431

John Rickford on Mac

A Tribute by John Rickford

(L-John Rickford, R-Wordsworth McAndrew, May 2003)

I got to know Mac quite well from about 1974 when I returned to Guyana to teach at UG and do fieldwork in Better Hope and other rural areas. He accompanied me on several occasions, joining in the interviewing about language, folklore, folk life and culture with great interest and delight, and branching into other areas (like the Kali Mai Puja ceremonies held weekly at the house of Dora, a Better Hope/East coast legend). Some of that material found its way into his radio show, "What Else?" and into the slim but informative "Ooiy!" magazine he published.

He also participated in the "Festival of Guyanese Words" conference that we held in Georgetown, featuring research presentations by students and faculty and others, but with valuable feedback from non-academics whose expertise as farmers, stevedores, or just a native Guyanese qualified them to extend and challenge our findings. He contributed a paper on Guyanese folksongs, with a short example from each "chapter" of the folksong book, as he put it ("Representational," "Congo," "Queh-Queh," "Pork-Knocker," "Ring Play," "Cumfa" and "East Indian Rhyming Song," which he described repeatedly as the newest chapter in the folk-song book, and the one that was being augmented most extensively). And he helped immeasurably with proof-reading, the word-index, and other aspects of the publication that resulted from that conference, and he even stood with us on street corners to sell the publication. (Thanks in part to his street smarts, the first edition of 500 sold out in one week.)

I learned a lot from Mac over the years. He had an absolute love for Guyanese "culchuh" as he put it--and an infinite interest in every variant of every tradition (queh queh, obeah, cumfa), song, story, game, way of cooking, eating, celebrating, and so on that Guyanese and West Indian peoples of every ethnic group had inherited and transformed. I learned a lot from him about how to do fieldwork well. For instance, if someone said they played a game called "Airy Dory," and asked if he'd ever heard of it, he'd either say "No," (although I knew he had heard several accounts of it already) or otherwise indicate that he wanted to hear this particular person's version. Invariably, some new detail, some local variant would emerge in the course of the narration, and his understanding of the full range and complexity (and perhaps history) of that cultural institution would be enriched in the process.

I also learned, from observation and practice, the importance of lavishing time and attention to people in the course of fieldwork--taking time not only to ask them about the particular things you were interested in, but just to "lime" with them, take a drink and eat some food with them, show them that you cared about them as human beings. I contrast this, when I teach my own fieldwork course, with the experience the author Studs Terkel reports in one of his books in which an interviewee asked him to stay and shoot the breeze after he'd conducted an interview. Because he had another interview across town, he said he couldn't stay, But the interviewee rebuked him: "Hey, how's it gonna sound--this guy, Studs, comes to my house, gets my whole life on tape, and says he's gotta run?" As Terkel put it, afterwards, he cancelled his other appointments and spent a memorable evening at the guy's home. But in retrospect, he wondered how he could have been so thoughtless. Wordsworth, who thoroughly enjoyed human interaction (even when it involved arguing about something, for the sheer love of argument) helped me avoid that kind of mistake. I always thought his name was well suited to his love of words, and wrote "Words worth it!" on the title page when I gave him a book of mine one year.

I could go on and on about Mac's other skills as a folklorist and culturologist and radio broadcaster and personality and his power as a poet and performer (anyone who has ever read his "Ole Higue" poem or heard him perform it will know whereof I speak), and about my other experiences with him (like the memorable "Turn back the clock" party he held in the late 70's when Burnham decided to change Guyana's time).

I hope someone will establish a website soon on which we can trade and exchange our stories about Mac and what he meant to Guyana and to us. There will undoubtedly be other occasions for us to reflect on his significance and celebrate his life orally and in print. I also hope that some of his recordings and notes and articles will find their way into the University of Guyana or a similar library or archives for future generations of Guyanese scholars to study and future generations of Guyanese to enjoy. For the moment, and for a start, I merely wanted to share some of my thoughts on the passing of Guyana's greatest folklorist.

Walk good, my friend, or as our Surinamese neighbours say, Waka bunu.

Wordsworth McAndrew